Cataclysm – New Races

New Races
The events of the cataclysm has caused two new races to seek new allies. The Goblins for the Horde and the Worgen for the Alliance.

Goblins
Deathwing once again sought the services of the goblins, as slaves. Unable to refuse such an offer, the goblins were enslaved by him. A large group have resisted however. With their previous homes devastated by the cataclysm, they escaping to an island off the coast of The Barrens. As they strive to recover, they come across an Orc captured on an Alliance ship and rescue him. The Orc turns out to be none other than Thrall himself, and in return offers the Goblins a place within the Horde. These events are carried out in a quest line, allowing players to experience first-hand the reasons behind the Goblins’ shift from neutrality.

Worgen
The cataclysm has cracked open the Greymane Wall, finally revealing what has happened to the kingdom of Gilneas and its citizens. With the Worgen curse taken hold, they have found a partial cure, allowing thme to retain their Human minds even when transformed. Venturing forth from Gilneas and seeking help from the Alliance, they have decided to join them, to combat the new threats of Cataclysm.

Gilneas will make extensive use of the phasing system (much like the Death Knight starting area), to show what happened while the kingdom was cut off from the rest of the world and lead up to present day.

Worgens will have two forms, a Worgen form and a Human form. Players will be able to customise the look of both forms.

Goblins

Aaaaaahhhh!

I don’t want goblins in my raids!!!!

Prepare to be smacked with Halloween wands and forced to eat deviate fish. Goblins are almost as annoying as gnomes.

Anyway… I’m pretty sure the “previous homes” they mention are going to be a combination of the island nation that they supposedly hail from in the middle of the ocean and possibly Ratchet (more on that later in the week).

Now, Thrall ends up in the hands of the Alliance a bit much. Started his whole career as a gladiator in Alliance pits, and now is on a mother fucking boat as an Alliance captive. It is unknown if he had his swim trunks and flippy-floppies.

How the hell did this happen? The freaking Warchief should have some decent bodyguards… which leads me to think that he was off on a secret peace mission that went sour or was sneaking out for a little nookie with Jaina. Mixing business with pleasure is always dangerous.

The fact that we get to run around with Thrall on another quest line is awesome, I hope it’s done like the Wrathgate and we’re all uber powerful. But will this quest line only be available to new goblins? I sure as hell hope not. What’s a level 3 goblin going to do to help the Warchief of the freaking Horde? You aren’t worthy of even touching his axe!

Big question surrounding goblin neutrality – what of the surviving goblin towns? There has to be a neutral auction house, I cannot imagine that Blizzard would remove that. I also can’t see a new neutral race being brought in to fill the gap. I’m thinking that only *some* or maybe even *most* but not *all* of the goblins will be heading over to the Horde; those firmly entrenched in their neutral businesses will continue to profit off both sides.

So what about classes?

I know of goblin bruisers in all the towns, that should indicate warrior as an available class, even if it is laughable.

And… then I kinda get lost. I can’t think of any notable goblins that “do” anything besides make money.

Goblins on the whole seem too self-centered to justify any use of the Light, unless the Light can be bribed. So that leaves out paladin and priest.

They will most likely get warlock and mage. Warlock is currently only available to 5 of the 10 vanilla/TBC races so it’s a little underrepresented and mage just seems like the class to pass around this expansion.

So we’ve got three, they really need at least 5 to be viable.

We’ve got hunter, druid, shaman, and rogue left.

Rogue is the first obvious fit. There is definitely profit to be made and their small stature lends to being sneaky.

But hunter, druid, and shaman… going with hunter. Their pets are going to be huge in comparison, but like I mentioned with the humans and blood elves, it doesn’t take much affinity with much of anything to pull this one off.

This however, leaves them with no healing class, which makes me think that they will get priest just like the gnomes. Fun lore times ahead, I’m sure.

I’m seeing half of the Barrens as their starting zone.

Worgen

I am going to roll a worgen, no two ways about it.

I was expecting armor to look goofy on them.

But then I saw the tidbit about having a human and worgen form. I think it’s going to work out like druids, we won’t even see the armor when they are in worgen form. Much less work for developers on that.

You probably won’t ever see me outside of worgen form, I think humans in this game look awful.

Oh! Has anyone ever seen a worgen dance? This could be awesome! /crosses fingers

I saw a snippet somewhere (sorry, can’t remember where) that suggested the possibility of human form by day and worgen form by night. Eeee… I’m hoping not for 2 reasons.

First, I expect shifting to work somewhat like a druid and there will be benefits to both forms. Perhaps they are physically stronger in worgen form but better as casters in human form. Limiting that to times of the day would be awkward and I could see top-end guilds rearranging schedules to match the appropriate time for the form they want.

Second, people play at all times and sometimes are very limited in when they can play. People who can only play within certain time frames would be terribly disappointed if they couldn’t see everything their character has to offer.

I’m completely cool with the lore here and am looking forward to another round of phasing quests.

Classes?

Definitely warrior.

And I’m going to go with druid. As Randul spoiled yesterday, I noted that with trolls gaining druid it brought the score to Horde with 2 druid races and Alliance with only 1. This would fix that problem and even the scales again.

I’m going to immediately rule out warlock per my personal belief that the two classes should not coexist in the same race.

With druid establishing a nature-affinity, I will add shaman to my list.

I also think rogue will be viable and I’m leaning towards hunter – if only because I want to see a worgen with a huge-ass tamed wolf. Both named Spot or something like that.

I image that they will get mage… like everyone else now. Their whole issue is a curse, mages remove curses, so they studied magic. Blah.

We already know that they come from Gilneas so that answers the question of where they will start. The phasing should lead up nicely to dump them into Silverpine Forest. This would make Silverpine a contested zone, however. Hmmmm…. Maybe the phasing will take them all the way to Hillsbrad?

Clarification about new race/class combinations

Yes, I’m sorry, I overgeneralized yesterday about the distinction between the Highborne and the High Elves (thank you Randul). As theerivs pointed out, not many people care about the lore so I didn’t want to delve too deeply into it. I’m glad to see someone besides me cares.

After some thought, I think I’m almost OK with night elves taking on mage. For a Highborne to approach the night elves with an offer of assistance and the night elves to actually accept it just speaks volumes about the state the world must be in. It adds some depth to the desperation that must be going on. It makes them a little more gritty and determined, I’ll live with it. I might even come to like it.

I think instead of Goblins and Worgens being assigned to a side, they start off and level no more than 10 levels in a neutral setting (sort of like the beginning of DK-ness) and along the way, they must make choices that leave them hated by one side and wanted by another. Sort of like the Centaur Clans in Desolace, but without such an obvious choice. More like “You need to prove your worth and go to either ____ town of Blood Elves, or ___ town of Night Elves. Here is your ambiguous elf costume, go forth and make money!”

But it shouldn’t just be you keep going to the same kinds of towns or whatever. Make it much more subtle, and make rewards appealing on both quest chains or whatever so that there are opportunities to basically kill both Alliance and Horde type toons, and then at the end, it sort of averages them out or something and a questgiver/messenger gives you a notice saying that your deeds have been noted by this leader of the Horde/Alliance and that they are now out for blood, but this leader of the Horde/Alliance is willing to protect you if you atone for the destruction you wrought on them. I’d have fun designing those quests.